Warcry Heart of Ghur Terrain

Quite a big project from last year... the Heart of Ghur terrain set. Incredible scenery, pain in the arse to build and paint but totally worth it.

Having said that, I'd quite like those 8 hours I spent painting all the ropes on the Bamboo bridges and walkways!

Here the process/techniques.

Basecoats

Sprayed Colour Forge Hyrax Brown.

Skeletons - airbrushed Gobi Brown, then up to AK Warm Grey

Bamboo - Morghast Bone, airbrush highlighted Warm Grey

Rope - Vallejo Dark Grey

Tree teeth and other bone features - base-coated AK Warm Grey

Seraphon Ruins - Zenithal Death World Forest then Nugling Green over the brown basecoat

Trees - Rhinox Hide, highlighted Mournfang Brown. Bugmans Glow then Cadian Fleshtone on the upper bit where the teeth are.

Ground bits - Cygor Brown

Rocks - Stormvermin Fur then highlighted with Aminitratum Grey

Wash - dark brown oil wash then matte varnish over everything.

Next up, I highlighted the trees with a dry brush of Gorthor Brown then Baneblade Borwn. I also drybrushed Cadian Fleshtone on the tips. Finally, paint over tree teeth with warm grey and apply a wash of Red Tone to the teeth/tips of the branches

I then highlighted the rest of the bone, bamboo with a dry brush of warm grey.

Apply Athonian Camoshade to the base/lower parts of each piece.

red/brown pigments then gamers grass paper flowers!

40K Terrain and Scenery

During Spring and Summer 2022, I dedicated about 4 months to working on 40k terrain in preparation for 2022 Nerd Day. This post summarises this effort with photos of each piece I worked on.

Azyrite Ruins

This week its back to scenery for my AoS woodland board in the form of some Azyrite Ruins.

I wanted to experiment with mounting the Ruins pieces into a base so I could add details such as a textured floor. So, to begin with, I arranged the ruins into 2 sets and glued them to some MDF.

Next, I rolled patches of DAS air-drying modelling clay onto the MDF and used the Temple texture roller from Greenstuff World. The DAS adhered to the MDF with PVA - which turned out to be a mistake as it contributed to the MDF warping.

Once the DAS clay had dried, I mixed up some texture paint from sand, PVA and polyfiller. This was then applied to the bases, taking care not to cover the template floor areas. I then primed the plastic ruins and the temple floor.

To paint the ruins I used the colour scheme detailed in the below WHTV video. The template floor sections were painted Rakarth Flesh > Pallid Wych Flesh > White Scar. In preparation for flocking, the earth parts of the base were painted with Hobbycraft dark brown paint.

And for the flocking, I essentially followed the below video from Lukes APS.

And this is how they turned out! To finish off the pieces I added some aquatic foliage with a hot glue gun and a couple of pieces of twig, glued down with PVA.

And these are the pieces on the board. I'm reasonably happy with how they turned out. I'm a bit annoyed with how much the MDF warped as a result of the PVA glue contracting. Since making these pieces I have switched over to using Extruded Polystyrene as this doesn't warp. It's much more expensive but, in my opinion, that's a worthy trade-off.

Next up I'll be working on Sprinewrack Talons!

Nerd Day 2018 Battlescape

Last year I hosted a gaming weekend for myself and 3 buddies. I posted about that event here.

This year, the event will be held at the end of August and will focus entirely on the fantasy side of the hobby... Blood Bowl, Age of Sigmar & Shadespire. To help us play Age of Sigmar to its full potential, we will need a suitably awesome board to play on!

The board aesthetic will be themed along the lines of a Ghyran (Realm of Life) forest which has remnants of its Nurgle corruption.

I have already purchased the mat. I went for the PWork Wargames Terrain Mat - Woodland. It's a great mat and is the perfect tone I was after! (e.g. not too dark or bright)

To populate the board I will be adding various pieces of terrain and scenery... e.g. fallen trees, Azyrite Ruins, temple columns and Nurgle trees. I will cover each piece in detail when they are complete. For now, here is some early work in progress pictures of the pieces I've started working on.

Sylvaneth Alarielle and Wardroth Beetle Base

As soon as I completed the Wardroth Beetle I turned my attention to the base. I wanted to complete the base before moving on to Alarielle herself.

I was super excited to do the base as it gave me the chance to get more experience with lots of scenery building techniques which I've been picking up via YouTube. So, lets go through the design and steps involved in achieving the design!

As mentioned, I wanted to test out a few scenery techniques. Primarily these were:

·        using Scultamould,

·        using Rocks cast from Woodland scenics moulds,

·        Painting the rocks with the leopard spot techniques,

·        Using clear resin for a water pool,

·        Applying LukesAPS woodland floor scatter flock.

I learnt many of the above technique watching Lukes APS videos, check out his channel here.

First of all, I wanted to raise the Beetle up a little bit so the plaster cast rock had enough clearance under the model. After that had been finalised, I cracked open the sculptamould!

Once the sculptamould had been on the base for 5-10 minutes or so, I used a wet finger to smooth out the material.

I didn't seem to take any photos for much of the build, so let me cover the steps taken. Before the scultamould dried and became hard I added various little details like the tree stump, various larger rocks and root details. I then added various size rocks and sands and glued them into place with superglue. After that stage, I began the painting! I airbrushed the entire base with Vallejo Black Primer. Then, I painted the rocks with the leopard stop technique and the soil with a cheap Hobbycraft brown paint.

Then it was time to add the static grass and other texture... First of all, I coated the base with PVA and applied some Warlord Autumn Static Grass. Then I stuck some clump foliage, lichen and daffodil flowers with PVA. Then I sprinkled on some LukesAPS forest ground cover clock and finally some green leaf folliage. to seal these layers I applied multiple coats of watered down PVA and Isopropyl alcohol. The picture below is at this stage - if you look closely you can see how soaked the static grass is!

The final step was to add the Woodlands Scenics Realistic Water effects. This photo was taken after the first pour of resin. It took 3 pours to get the level I wanted. I think I could have done it in less, however, I didn't want to overdo it and ruin the base.

Imperial City Gaming Mat

As part of the preparation for Nerd Day, this bad boy recently arrived.

Picked up from Element Games, its standard battle mat (in that it is effectively a huge mouse mat). The printed design is well detailed, of a muted colour pallete and follows the design of the GW Realm of Battle: Sector Imperialis.

Needless to say, it looks awesome! I can't wait to complete more pieces of terrain over the coming months to place on such a great mat.

Imperial Bastion

In preparation for 'Nerd Day 2017' (see previous post), I first tackled an update to an Imperial Bastion. This piece of terrain was part of Great Scenery Rescue of 2016 and whilst it was already built and painted by the time it came into my possession, I wanted to test out some weathering techniques.

The model was repainted in Death World Forest with the details being picked out with standar base colours- Leadbelcher, Mephiston Red, Celestra Grey and Zandri Dust. I then applied the decals and sponged on a mix of Chaos Black and Rhinox Hide to simulate wear and tear. After this I sealed the model with gloss varnish. Next up I applied a wash of mixed black/burnt umber oil paint and allowed it to dry for about an hour. At that point, I used white spirit to diffuse the wash. The penultimate step involved the application of a watered down mix of Steel Legion Drab and various weathering powders. This can mainly be observed on the roof deck. Finally I airbrushed black on all the shell marks and applied a coat of satin varnish.

Next up will be some barrels! Fun times.

Keeping It In The Family: The Great Scenery Rescue of 2016

On a recent holiday up to York to see a friend (who is taking a break from the hobby) & his family, I purchased his scenery collection. It's quite the collection, as you can see in the photo below, so wanted to cover it in a post.

After returning to the hobby in 2013/2014, I played my first battles against my friend at his house. As a result these pieces of scenery are quite close to my heart and remind me of some good times rolling dice and chilling out with my friend. During those weekends at my friends house, aside from facing off my Spare Marines against his treacherous Chaos army, we would spend time panting some of these pieces up. Hobbying is something most of us probably do alone so it was awesome to to sit outside (in the sun), drink beer and hobby with someone doing the same!

Due to the never ending battle between hobbying need and grown-up 'real life' needs my friend has since chosen to watch the hobby from the sidelines and has been looking to move on his collection of scenery. So, it would have been a shame for these to be lost to some lucky eBay punter and it's good that they are to remain within our hobbying 'family'.

My medium/long terms plan is to purchase a suitable gaming mat/board for use at home and it's at that point I will be able to use these items all all their glory. In the mean time I will give each piece a touch up; testing out some of the new skills I have picked up over the last few years. I'm especially looking forward to repainting the broken Aquilla piece in a marble paint effect (again taking advantage of a GW 2015 Advent Calendar video), adding some weathering to the Space Marine statue (using the technique described in this video tutorial by Tabletop Minions) and getting down and dirty with the Bastion (making it look suitably battered!).